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Archive for the ‘Internet stuff’ Category

You may already know how awesome 3D printing is, so forgive me if this post is a kind of “No duh” for you. My inner old lady comes out when I hear the word “3D” — the Nintendo 3DS gives me a headache as do 3D movies. Not a fan. Of course, as you may already know, 3D printing is not really like those things at all. 3D printing makes your dreams come to LIFE!

Okay, maybe that’s a slight overstatement, but not really. You want to make a spider guitar? You can. How about a pizza? Yes. Did you have a dream last night of Abraham Lincoln riding off into the sunset on a unicorn? You can probably make that, but I couldn’t find an image of it on the internet. Need a liver or kidney? Pretty soon, doctors will be able to print one up for you.

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Alright, I’m calling it: ugly Christmas sweaters just aren’t funny anymore. Some have rung the death toll for this Christmas trend long before me, but now it’s time to put the final nail in the coffin.

What started out as a small-scale holiday event where kitsch-lovers could comb through the racks of thrift stores and estate sales for the most horrendously ironic of Christmas cardigans (think: bright pink sweaters with puffy-paint kittens and Christmas trees) has been ruined the way most fun things are: by stores trying to monetize a trend.

From Urban Outfitters moody models trying to look sexy in oversized sweaters with gold sleighs to the NBA – yes, the NBA – making their own ugly Christmas sweatshirts printed in team colors, here are the worst offenders we could find.

Google’s search engine algorithms are getting smarter. Great, right? What if the trade-off is that we’re getting dumber? Ian Leslie has an article up on Salon.com that asks this question and whether or not Google search is harmless. Is it beneficial to find immediate answers by Google search on our smartphone/tablet/computer? Not if we’re getting too lazy to ask the right questions.

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For a large group of trick-or-treaters and Halloween partiers each year, stumping fellow fiends with their amusingly tongue-in-cheek costume is even better than candy. From pop culture icons (like Miley and her wrecking ball) to ’90s movie classics (like Ace Ventura: Pet Detective), there’s always at least one costumed comedian at the Halloween party dying to see how many people “get” their oh-so-clever disguise.

My fave funny costumes are the ones based on puns. Each year I see more brilliant costume ideas than the year before. Below you’ll find 15 of the best punny costumes on the interwebz (as judged by me). And the best part is many of these costumes can be whipped up with stuff you have lying around, or with a quick trip to your local craft store.

An English term paper (worth half your grade) due in two weeks; once-a-week write-ups due for a Biology course; weekly meetings at the poetry club; best friend’s birthday; date night; part-time work at the cafeteria; mom needs a ride to the airport – a bunch of little (and not so little) parts that make up every week. Where to start? Overwhelming seems like an understatement when you’re neck-deep in obligations and assignments.

Instead of inundating yourself with time-saving apps and self-help organizational books, try applying the zen-like doctrine of culinary chefs. Mise-en-place (French for “to put in place”) has made its way out of the kitchen into business offices and households everywhere as a method to organize one’s day and squeeze as many productive minutes out of it as possible.

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Whoever you are, whatever your SAT score and high school report card looks like, you could take a course at Harvard, Yale, MIT, Stanford, or Johns Hopkins right this minute. These elite schools, among many others, have begun to offer open, online, not-for-credit courses to anyone who wants to take them. These are casually referred to as MOOCs, massive open online courses.

You might assume that these classes consist only of video lectures, a collection of slides with a professor’s voiceover, the equivalent of watching some informative YouTube videos. In fact, the courses are as complete as any you’d take in college. There are assigned readings to accompany every class, a syllabus, homework, and essays. Many of them even have some form of grading.

Oof. Cable news network HLN, originally a CNN off-shoot, has taken the page from the strategy of networks like TLC or AMC: abandoning the original concept for the station (Headline News, The Learning Channel, and American Movie Classics, respectively) but keeping the original acronym. The new, refurbished HLN is doing away with the endlessly repeated news cycle and the Nancy Grace-like “outrage news” segments, and replacing them with new material targeted to the millennial demographic.

Apparently the people at Turner Broadcasting don’t have a very high opinion of your demographic.

Here are the new show titles, ranked in increasing order of absurdity: (more…)